The RIAA/MPAA drops its suits for copyright violation, and Sharman drops theirs with a promise to never sue again. Then it works out all nice and happy-like for the end-users, eh?
So can we now submit endless DMCA subpoenas to them, then threaten to sue and get outrageous settlements for their invasions of our privacy via usage of illegal software?
"Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa file-sharing software, filed a federal lawsuit in September accusing the entertainment companies of using unauthorized versions of its software in their efforts to snoop out users who were downloading copyright music files from others on the network.
Sharman said the companies used Kazaa Lite, an ad-less replica of its software, to get onto the network, and that they violated its own software's license agreement by sending warning messages to people on its network."
There's the answer; the RIAA/MPAA used an _illegally modified_ version of Kazaa Media Desktop in order to connect to the network. When you install Kazaa Lite (not saying that I have, despite what's copy/pasted next), it states:
"Please note that installing this software is ILLEGAL and is in violation of the Kazaa Media Desktop Terms of Use. If you do, however, install the software contained in this package, you agree to take ALL responsibility for your actions."
In this case, it's a big-ass lawsuit against you. The RIAA/MPAA violated the Sharman Networks EULA for Kazaa, and as such, opened themselves to legal action.
Ironic, isn't it?
(And to think that they could have used dummy machines to get around the Cydoor, P2P networking, and Gator that was in Kazaa...)
Spyhbot S&D's old version had a perfectly good HOSTS file, which contains over 20,000 ad/crapware servers rerouted to localhost. Unfortunately, Patrick Kolla removed it from the new version due to issues with DHCP Client and DNS Cache (Win2K and XP), but I managed to keep it, and with that and Firebird's "Block Images from this Server" command, I've not seen an ad in about two months.
What are the odds of McBride and co. actually winning a lawsuit against Linux users, especially with IBM and the geek community firmly entrenched against SCO?
Back when I was in high school at Strake Jesuit here in Houston, we were using NT4 systems, and some friends and I (fellow geeks, all picked on by the jocks) programmed a nice little utility to target the jocks' computers with net send messages... over and over with a distributed network, and they came at intervals, like popups now, so that they clicked it off, it'd pop back up, and so on.
The priests eventually caught us, and we did a few hours detention each. Nothing big, but it was worth it.
Commentary with text:
"If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished."
But if we hadn't experimented in the first place, you'd still be using DOS, lady, and it wouldn't matter. Actually, odds are you'd be using a proprietary OS on a, oh, DEC PDP-11 or something.
"Hacking into a system should be highest on the list of tampering violations. I believe the other students are now aware that the district takes this seriously and will not tolerate such misuse of our equipment."
Really? What about the teachers who check web e-mail in class? They download viruses and worms into the systems.
What about the students who look at porn on school grounds?
What about the students who download MP3s, thus making you liable? (Hey, if the netadmin didn't disable Messenger, odds are he's stupid enough to let Kazaa through.)
Lastly, what part of this disrupted the system/penetrated it in any way? A two-second popup from the system doesn't bother people. If it does, you turn the service off.
Of course, if you had a brain, you've had it off since September 2002, so...
WhenU pales in comparison to CoolWebSearch. If yo udon't know what that is, it's a Trojan that drops files on your computer that change your IE settings, slow down/crash IE/your system, and can download and execute arbitrary unsigned code, and one version (CWS.ehhtp) tracks everything you do on the Web that begins with WWW, as it changes the prefix "WWW" to "http://ehttp.cc/?". Over 23 variants of it have been documented in _five months_.
WhenU is at least installed through legal means. CWS installs through holes in the MS Java Machine.
If the courts wish to create injunctions against spyware/adware, why don't they just go against these first?
(For more information on CWS, if you're interested, check out Merijn's section on it. His CWShredder tool is quite nice.)
WhenU has been a big pain. I've seen it on tons of machines, and I've even documented cases of it crashing a few XP machines. Not destroying - just crashing, but it's still as annoying as hell to get rid of it.
On a side note, this is why we have Spywareinfo.com's forums... and the neighborhood geek next door, payable in Doritos and new components.
One last thing: I've found that Ad-Aware doesn't quite do as good a job removing this as Spybot S&D does. I use both and complement them with HijackThis and CWShredder to round it out.
If the industry-approved player has an audio out port, be it normal 1/8th inch or otherwise, the cd can be ripped, albeit not in the normal fashion.
They can release their own players with their own built-in speakers and headphones, but all you've to do is splice in wires. Besides, that would be virtual suicide, as no one wants to use the industry's headphones, they want to use the ones they have (in my case, a pair of studio-quality noi-sedampening Labtecs).
1 Unleash vigilante justice on spammers One activist has proposed filters that launch distributed denial-of-service attacks back at spammers. Great. Just make sure we have the right addresses first.
And for the love of God, make it devastating. Forget the annoying little "plug the pipes" attacks, find their homes and spray-paint "I send penis-enlargement spam mail" on the front or something in 300-point text. Let the neighbors know that they've got a spammer next door.
2 Slash song prices charge 29 cents per download. You''ll make it up in volume.
You'll also apparently more than make up for it in apostrophes.
4 Appoint Larry Lessig to the Supreme Court Is he a Democrat or a Republican? Who cares! Laws governing information flow are the new affirmative action, abortion, and gun control rolled into one.
Toss him, Linus, and RMS to the board and we've got a nice consortium. Of course, that nulls their free time for work on the kernel and projects and such, so it's a tradeoff.
5 Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages - they should all go into a single app.
Yeah. Now you'll have three times as much as spam. Telemarketers (despite the do-not-call registry), e-mail spam, and IM spam - Christ, all that in one app? Talk about bloat.
6 Triple our cable modem speed First step: Just turn off the Golf Channel and UPN.
While we're at it, how about any network that shows reality TV?
8 Declare spammers are terrorists And put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
Not that it matters, judging by their track record. Where's Osama?
11 Larry Flynt, build a porn browser It should cover our tracks coming and going.
There's already such a browser: Netscape 4.08. NS has it archived on their site:
However, that's Windows/Mac/Unix/Solaris only. There's no Linux version, sadly.
Combine that with a file shredder for the cache, and you're good to go.
14 Dump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Finally, someone in the mass media agrees, though Wired doesn't hit nearly as many people as CNN.
16 Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move?
Erm, it's kind of easy to do in IE6. Modify the following URL to fit: ftp://username:password@servername.com/directory then treat it like a normal Windows Explorer window. Not hard to do; I've been doing that for months as I can't find a standalone WS-FTP LE installer. (Web installers suck.)
17 Let a thousand Wi-Fis bloom Open spectrum is the new open source.
This could be incredibly useful, especially for providing BitTorrent seeds. Now if we could all become anonymous in them, that would be even better.
19 Make privacy a personal asset Canada has it already: a law that prevents firms from consolidating all customer information after a merger.
The only way this will ever happen is if people get a clue about spyware/adware and start to learn to clean their boxes. This will never happen, though, as most people don't care, so...
21 Bring on the perp walks We want to see the next CEO whose company's servers leak 10,000 credit card numbers marched past TV cameras by the FBI.
We don't just want the CEO, we want the IT officers (if they failed to apply patches to the servers or did something utterly stupid), and after they're taken by the cameras, take them into the streets and videotape the people who had their numbers leaked beating them with Wiffle Bats.
23 Offer real RIAA amnesty Instead of telling us to delete MP3s or pay a fine, how about you let us pay a fair price to keep them.
But how many people are willing to pay for their MP3s when they can CD-swap with their friends and take what they want from them while giving in return?
I'd swear that I saw a story about some people's toasters gaining intelligence and revolting against humanity when hooked up to a home network in a book a few years back.
I don't remember the title, but the last line of the story was a refridgerator saying "WHERE HAVE ALL THE TOASTERS GONE?" when they were disconnected.
It's probably the twelve-year-old Performa 467 I keep around to play old Ambrosia games (yeah, I know about Basilisk, and I use it on my Win2K box for old Mac apps that I like that require an '040). That's been with me since I was seven, and it's put up with an internal HD failure and abuse from me, my kid brother, my sister, the family, and one incident with a dog, but other than that, it's dang hardy.
Of course, there's my 200 GB LaCie external USB hard drive. That's been kicked around a lot, and it still works. (It's currently a backup drive on my Win2K Server box.)
Actually, hell, any of the computers at my workplace count. Y'see, elementary school kids and computers don't mix well. Amazingly, though, I've not had to call the hardware repair company out in about three years. The old Macs we have are dang durable, and the Compaq Deskpros could be beaten with a mallet and not show damage. (I know, I've done it.)
Since IronPort has access to SpamCop's filters now, they could hypothetically engineer a method around them or just kill the product entirely - or make it so that only they could bypass it, and any other spams sent from elsewhere would be blocked.
Arming the wolf with the shepherd's crook? More like giving him an M-249.
Been there, done that. I was a tech at #216 in Houston for a while, then I regained my sense of morals and went to work for a local school district.
And it's $29.95 for a tune-up, unless they've changed it since I left.
They also tell people that it'll take a week to install a new video card/modem/whatnot, and that's even if the queue is empty and there are no machines to work on. I said "bugger that" and did it right there, right then, with nothing in the queue, no machines in the back, nothing. It was otherwise dead time, and it got me a written reprimand for "not following proper SOP."
The school district I work for buys (of course) only Dells thanks to a Region IV contract with Dell for volume purchasing, and of course, the kids (elementary, middle, and high) download crapware to them all the time.
I spend about fifty percent of my time on campus removing spyware/adware/malware instead of doing things like, oh, adding gigabit equipment to the server, getting out new OpenCD server up and running, and getting the iMacs we have to actually clone and stay working (IMHO, Apple Network Assistant's a pain to use. A 200 GB LaCie USB HD works better).
The teachers aren't much better, and some of them actually _like_ the damn Bonzi Buddy... and Clippy too, but I got rid of _that_ with less hassle.
And in regards to the lawyers... if the spyware companies' lawyers say we're violating the EULAs, we can retaliate by saying that they're violating the Children's Online Protection Act, and we've got more grounds to sue than they do.
Slashdot Mirror
How about this?
The RIAA/MPAA drops its suits for copyright violation, and Sharman drops theirs with a promise to never sue again. Then it works out all nice and happy-like for the end-users, eh?
So can we now submit endless DMCA subpoenas to them, then threaten to sue and get outrageous settlements for their invasions of our privacy via usage of illegal software?
"Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa file-sharing software, filed a federal lawsuit in September accusing the entertainment companies of using unauthorized versions of its software in their efforts to snoop out users who were downloading copyright music files from others on the network.
Sharman said the companies used Kazaa Lite, an ad-less replica of its software, to get onto the network, and that they violated its own software's license agreement by sending warning messages to people on its network."
There's the answer; the RIAA/MPAA used an _illegally modified_ version of Kazaa Media Desktop in order to connect to the network. When you install Kazaa Lite (not saying that I have, despite what's copy/pasted next), it states:
"Please note that installing this software is ILLEGAL and is in violation of the Kazaa Media Desktop Terms of Use. If you do, however, install the software contained in this package, you agree to take ALL responsibility for your actions."
In this case, it's a big-ass lawsuit against you. The RIAA/MPAA violated the Sharman Networks EULA for Kazaa, and as such, opened themselves to legal action.
Ironic, isn't it?
(And to think that they could have used dummy machines to get around the Cydoor, P2P networking, and Gator that was in Kazaa...)
You've got to turn off DHCP Client and DNS Caching.
It's not bad, but Patrick Kolla's old HOSTS file from Spybot S&D 1.2 did a better job.
Spyhbot S&D's old version had a perfectly good HOSTS file, which contains over 20,000 ad/crapware servers rerouted to localhost. Unfortunately, Patrick Kolla removed it from the new version due to issues with DHCP Client and DNS Cache (Win2K and XP), but I managed to keep it, and with that and Firebird's "Block Images from this Server" command, I've not seen an ad in about two months.
I see someone remembers the whole CWS incident with redirections to thehun.com, then. >_
It's about as big an oxymoron as Microsoft Works.
Sounds like the CBCDG might be in cahoots with Diebold from the look of the "black boxes."
What are the odds of McBride and co. actually winning a lawsuit against Linux users, especially with IBM and the geek community firmly entrenched against SCO?
The indemnification idea is a last resort.
Back when I was in high school at Strake Jesuit here in Houston, we were using NT4 systems, and some friends and I (fellow geeks, all picked on by the jocks) programmed a nice little utility to target the jocks' computers with net send messages... over and over with a distributed network, and they came at intervals, like popups now, so that they clicked it off, it'd pop back up, and so on.
The priests eventually caught us, and we did a few hours detention each. Nothing big, but it was worth it.
Commentary with text:
"If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished."
But if we hadn't experimented in the first place, you'd still be using DOS, lady, and it wouldn't matter. Actually, odds are you'd be using a proprietary OS on a, oh, DEC PDP-11 or something.
"Hacking into a system should be highest on the list of tampering violations. I believe the other students are now aware that the district takes this seriously and will not tolerate such misuse of our equipment."
Really? What about the teachers who check web e-mail in class? They download viruses and worms into the systems.
What about the students who look at porn on school grounds?
What about the students who download MP3s, thus making you liable? (Hey, if the netadmin didn't disable Messenger, odds are he's stupid enough to let Kazaa through.)
Lastly, what part of this disrupted the system/penetrated it in any way? A two-second popup from the system doesn't bother people. If it does, you turn the service off.
Of course, if you had a brain, you've had it off since September 2002, so...
"Women's rights. Same-sex marriage. Civil liberties. Anti-Patriot Act. Patagonia. Paper towels. Ralph Nader for President!"
That ought to set off every filter Carnivore has. Now how long will it be before the feds come?
WhenU pales in comparison to CoolWebSearch. If yo udon't know what that is, it's a Trojan that drops files on your computer that change your IE settings, slow down/crash IE/your system, and can download and execute arbitrary unsigned code, and one version (CWS.ehhtp) tracks everything you do on the Web that begins with WWW, as it changes the prefix "WWW" to "http://ehttp.cc/?". Over 23 variants of it have been documented in _five months_.
WhenU is at least installed through legal means. CWS installs through holes in the MS Java Machine.
If the courts wish to create injunctions against spyware/adware, why don't they just go against these first?
(For more information on CWS, if you're interested, check out Merijn's section on it. His CWShredder tool is quite nice.)
WhenU has been a big pain. I've seen it on tons of machines, and I've even documented cases of it crashing a few XP machines. Not destroying - just crashing, but it's still as annoying as hell to get rid of it.
On a side note, this is why we have Spywareinfo.com's forums... and the neighborhood geek next door, payable in Doritos and new components.
One last thing: I've found that Ad-Aware doesn't quite do as good a job removing this as Spybot S&D does. I use both and complement them with HijackThis and CWShredder to round it out.
If the industry-approved player has an audio out port, be it normal 1/8th inch or otherwise, the cd can be ripped, albeit not in the normal fashion.
They can release their own players with their own built-in speakers and headphones, but all you've to do is splice in wires. Besides, that would be virtual suicide, as no one wants to use the industry's headphones, they want to use the ones they have (in my case, a pair of studio-quality noi-sedampening Labtecs).
I wonder if they're reading these forums now?
1 Unleash vigilante justice on spammers One activist has proposed filters that launch distributed denial-of-service attacks back at spammers. Great. Just make sure we have the right addresses first.
And for the love of God, make it devastating. Forget the annoying little "plug the pipes" attacks, find their homes and spray-paint "I send penis-enlargement spam mail" on the front or something in 300-point text. Let the neighbors know that they've got a spammer next door.
2 Slash song prices charge 29 cents per download. You''ll make it up in volume.
You'll also apparently more than make up for it in apostrophes.
4 Appoint Larry Lessig to the Supreme Court Is he a Democrat or a Republican? Who cares! Laws governing information flow are the new affirmative action, abortion, and gun control rolled into one.
Toss him, Linus, and RMS to the board and we've got a nice consortium. Of course, that nulls their free time for work on the kernel and projects and such, so it's a tradeoff.
5 Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages - they should all go into a single app.
Yeah. Now you'll have three times as much as spam. Telemarketers (despite the do-not-call registry), e-mail spam, and IM spam - Christ, all that in one app? Talk about bloat.
6 Triple our cable modem speed First step: Just turn off the Golf Channel and UPN.
While we're at it, how about any network that shows reality TV?
8 Declare spammers are terrorists And put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
Not that it matters, judging by their track record. Where's Osama?
11 Larry Flynt, build a porn browser It should cover our tracks coming and going.
There's already such a browser: Netscape 4.08. NS has it archived on their site:
http://wp.netscape.com/download/archive/client_a rc hive40x.html
However, that's Windows/Mac/Unix/Solaris only. There's no Linux version, sadly.
Combine that with a file shredder for the cache, and you're good to go.
14 Dump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Finally, someone in the mass media agrees, though Wired doesn't hit nearly as many people as CNN.
16 Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move?
Erm, it's kind of easy to do in IE6. Modify the following URL to fit: ftp://username:password@servername.com/directory then treat it like a normal Windows Explorer window. Not hard to do; I've been doing that for months as I can't find a standalone WS-FTP LE installer. (Web installers suck.)
17 Let a thousand Wi-Fis bloom Open spectrum is the new open source.
This could be incredibly useful, especially for providing BitTorrent seeds. Now if we could all become anonymous in them, that would be even better.
19 Make privacy a personal asset Canada has it already: a law that prevents firms from consolidating all customer information after a merger.
The only way this will ever happen is if people get a clue about spyware/adware and start to learn to clean their boxes. This will never happen, though, as most people don't care, so...
21 Bring on the perp walks We want to see the next CEO whose company's servers leak 10,000 credit card numbers marched past TV cameras by the FBI.
We don't just want the CEO, we want the IT officers (if they failed to apply patches to the servers or did something utterly stupid), and after they're taken by the cameras, take them into the streets and videotape the people who had their numbers leaked beating them with Wiffle Bats.
23 Offer real RIAA amnesty Instead of telling us to delete MP3s or pay a fine, how about you let us pay a fair price to keep them.
But how many people are willing to pay for their MP3s when they can CD-swap with their friends and take what they want from them while giving in return?
25 Pass a White Hat Protection Act H
I wonder if we can put tinfoil hats on our 802.11 emitters?
And yes, I know.
There goes my plan to wardrive around my city next year and shamelessy exploit^H^H^H^H^H^Hassist the BitTorrent network.
I'd swear that I saw a story about some people's toasters gaining intelligence and revolting against humanity when hooked up to a home network in a book a few years back.
I don't remember the title, but the last line of the story was a refridgerator saying "WHERE HAVE ALL THE TOASTERS GONE?" when they were disconnected.
BOSS: "I'm going to call you about the meeting to accept messages about the meeting. Is that okay with you?"
EMPLOYEE: "I didn't agree to receive this e-mail!"
Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM! (Bill Gates, 1981)
o fsengl.html
Windows 95 needs at least 8MB RAM! (Bill Gates, 1996)
Courtesy of http://www.leo.org/information/freizeit/fun/windo
It's probably the twelve-year-old Performa 467 I keep around to play old Ambrosia games (yeah, I know about Basilisk, and I use it on my Win2K box for old Mac apps that I like that require an '040). That's been with me since I was seven, and it's put up with an internal HD failure and abuse from me, my kid brother, my sister, the family, and one incident with a dog, but other than that, it's dang hardy.
Of course, there's my 200 GB LaCie external USB hard drive. That's been kicked around a lot, and it still works. (It's currently a backup drive on my Win2K Server box.)
Actually, hell, any of the computers at my workplace count. Y'see, elementary school kids and computers don't mix well. Amazingly, though, I've not had to call the hardware repair company out in about three years. The old Macs we have are dang durable, and the Compaq Deskpros could be beaten with a mallet and not show damage. (I know, I've done it.)
Since IronPort has access to SpamCop's filters now, they could hypothetically engineer a method around them or just kill the product entirely - or make it so that only they could bypass it, and any other spams sent from elsewhere would be blocked.
Arming the wolf with the shepherd's crook? More like giving him an M-249.
Been there, done that. I was a tech at #216 in Houston for a while, then I regained my sense of morals and went to work for a local school district.
And it's $29.95 for a tune-up, unless they've changed it since I left.
They also tell people that it'll take a week to install a new video card/modem/whatnot, and that's even if the queue is empty and there are no machines to work on. I said "bugger that" and did it right there, right then, with nothing in the queue, no machines in the back, nothing. It was otherwise dead time, and it got me a written reprimand for "not following proper SOP."
"Smart friend," my ass.
I know the feeling.
The school district I work for buys (of course) only Dells thanks to a Region IV contract with Dell for volume purchasing, and of course, the kids (elementary, middle, and high) download crapware to them all the time.
I spend about fifty percent of my time on campus removing spyware/adware/malware instead of doing things like, oh, adding gigabit equipment to the server, getting out new OpenCD server up and running, and getting the iMacs we have to actually clone and stay working (IMHO, Apple Network Assistant's a pain to use. A 200 GB LaCie USB HD works better).
The teachers aren't much better, and some of them actually _like_ the damn Bonzi Buddy... and Clippy too, but I got rid of _that_ with less hassle.
And in regards to the lawyers... if the spyware companies' lawyers say we're violating the EULAs, we can retaliate by saying that they're violating the Children's Online Protection Act, and we've got more grounds to sue than they do.